Transcript
In this video let's talk about S2O Stock Screener.
S2O Stock Screener saves hours of research time
Of course, Stock Analyzer can analyze a stock in a matter of seconds. However, sometimes analyzing stocks one by one is not so much fun and may take really long time if you are looking for a wonderful company to buy. Or perhaps even 2, 3 or even more companies.
S2O Stock Screener is designed to help you select stocks you like quickly. It saves hours and hours of research time.
Menu Stock Analysis / Stock Screener
Stock Screener is accessible to you on any page in any mode via main menu Stock Analysis / Stock Screener.
Stock Screener requires you to be logged in and have enough privileges, therefore Access Denied message is expected if you are not registered or not logged in. So I need to log in to my demo account.
Check available resources on "My Services" page.
Let's check if I have Screener service available for me - go to My Services page and check Currently Available Resources section. By the way, you can always subscribe to the one of available subscriptions right here. Well I have access to the Screener - let's use it!
S2O Stock Screener Controls
Screener page has 4 columns of filter settings and 2 buttons:
- Get Data. Click it when you are ready. It will produce a list of stocks, generated using your filter parameters.
- Clear All set all filters into the original "not set" state. There are more than a dozen drop down boxes and if you want to start from scratch, "Clear All" button is the fastest way to go.
General Purposes Filters
First column of filters is general purposes filters. It allows you to select a country and look for a stock in a specific sector and/or industry.
It also allows you to limit search result to stocks in a particular stock exchanges. I found exchange filter is extremely useful, because I'm not a pro and I do want to trade only well established stocks. Therefore I always want to see in my results stocks from large exchanges like NASDAQ and NYSE in US; I do not want to see stocks traded on a PINK or OTC exchange simply because I'm not comfortable trading penny and not well known stocks. So, I usually limit exchanges. But you can do it even in a reverse order and select only OTC and PINK exchanges, for example, if you really want to focus your search on a penny stocks.
Each line in those drop downs has a number in a brackets - it present total number of stocks presented in a particular sector, industry or exchange. The purpose is simple - to give you an idea of how big the universe of stocks is.
Please, note that Industry list depends on the selected sector and will be filtered by the sector you chose.
I know that Healthcare is a hot sector in US, when I select it, I can see all industries in the sector and I can see total number of stocks in each of them.
Fundamental Data Filters
Next column contains filters for fundamental attributes such as Growth Grade and Year over year Growth Grade, Debt to Free Cash Flow Ratio and Current PE.
Growth Grades allows to categorize stocks by financial strength. Growth Grade is based on historical or year-over-year growth rates. It weights each growth rate for five major financial metrics (Equity, Earnings per share, Sales, Free Cash Flow, Cash from Operating Activity and return on invested capital) using stock2own proprietary formula.
Stock2own computes two Growth Grades:
- Historical Growth Grade is based on historical growth rates and gives you a sense of how fast the company is growing.
- Year-over-year Growth Grade is based on year over year growth and shows how consistent the growth is.
Growth Grade is a simple grade where A+ is the best grade and F is the worst. So, if you are looking for a stronger businesses, select "B or better" and if you are looking for a weakest business, perhaps for a short sale, select value "D or worse", for example.
Debt to Free Cash Flow Ratio allows you to filter out those stocks that might be in trouble because of too much debt. The values are:
- Good - Debt Ratio is less than 3. In other words, company can pay off it's long term debt in less than 3 years.
- Fair - Debt Ratio is more than 3 but less than 4.
- Bad - company's cash level will not allow it to pay off it's long term debt in 4 years or less. Usually we see it as a red flag.
Last filter in this category is Current PE. Many investors are using PE ratio as an indication of undervalued or overpriced stocks. The average PE ratio is differ from industry to industry, but usually somewhere between 14 and 20. Therefore you can set a simple filter to search to average, below or above average PE stocks.
Technical Data Filters
Next set of filters is "Technicals":
Market Condition. It allows you to find stocks in a Bull or Bear condition. The market condition considered to be BULL only if the latest stock price is greater than 200 day moving average AND a middle term 50 day moving average is above 200 day moving average.
Market Price. This filter allows you to find real bargains. For instance, Phil Town in his book Rule #1 suggests that you should buy stocks below their value price and there are 2 options in this drop down that allows you to do exactly that: below Value Price and Above Value Price. The other pairs of values - Below and above BVPS (Book Value Per Share) allows to find even more difficult to find bargains - stocks that traded below their book value.
Trade Volume. Many technical investors paying attention to the volume of the trades. Especially at the time when stock price advances. As Mr. Weinstein said in his book Stan Weinstein's Secrets For Profiting in Bull and Bear Markets:
Never trust a breakout that isn't accompanied by a significant increase in volume.
And you can easily identify stocks with above or below average volume using this filter.
Indicators Filters
Indicators. This is another set of filters that uses technical analysis. Basically it allows you to filter stocks by... price chart. Let me explain.
I'm a big fan of Rule #1 and want to find all stocks that give me a buy signal based on Phil Town's The Three Tools: 10 days moving average, slow stochastic and MACD. In other words:
- Price must be above 10 days moving average (MA10)
- I also need those stocks which price is just crossed moving average line, because if price stays above MA line for a while it is more like a Hold signal, not a Buy. Therefore I set "Price Crossing" filter to "within 3 days" - it will give me all stocks where price crossed up MA10 line not later than 3 days ago.
- Slow stochastic should give me a positive signal, i.e. "%K is above %D"
- MACD is supposed to start forming a mountain - Positive value (histogram is above 0 line)
Get Data
When you are done setting filters all you have to do is click button "Get Data". The result set looks exactly like Watch List - it has all detailed characteristics of each stock and includes most recent market price along with technical indicator alert.
Click on any stock in the list and you can analyze it in the Stock Analyzer, take a quick look to a price chart without leaving this page. And you can even add it to your watch list - just click "Add to Watch List" item, select destination watch list and this stock will be waiting for you there!
Conclusion
At the end of this video I want to encourage you to give yourself time to get comfortable with S2O Stock Screener filters. There are so many options and it is easy to set very restrictive filters which will produce no results. Therefore this is always works best for me to start with a simple, less restrictive filter and keep working on it until I get a manageable number of stocks in a result set.
We will talk about ability to save your filter settings and go through some real life examples in the next videos.